Heretofore, there has been widely used a catering counter provided with a conveyor, wherein an endless path of travel is formed along the counter, dishes containing therein meals are rested on the path of travel, both customers sitting at the counter and cooks standing inside the counter need not to move from place to place, and the customers can select and eat meals of preferable taste, from the case of Japanese food "sushi" and the like served to be eaten as they are to the case of food such as grilled meat that the customers themselves can cook and eat.
The catering counter provided with the conveyor of the type described has improved the labor saving in restaurants and been useful for relieving the shortage of labor. However, since the dishes and meals are delivered at predetermined intervals on the path of travel in the catering counter, more dishes and meals than the customers need are delivered when the number of the customers is small, and moreover, the dishes and meals beyond demand are left uneaten for a long period of time, not preferable as viewed from a degree of freshness of the foods and for sanitary reason, and it is wasteful because an excessive power is consumed. However, it has been troublesome and disadvantageous that the number of customers is repeatedly counted at all times and the number of dishes and meals is adjusted to the counter number of customers.
Meanwhile, the present invention has made a proposal of that, in order to save the wasteful labor of delivering dishes containing therein uneaten meals to a kitchen when the number of the customers is small, a rotary disc is provided at a position close to the path of travel for the dishes and meals in front of the kitchen to short-cut the path of travel for the dishes and meals.
Notwithstanding, this proposal has proved unsatisfactory for transferring the dishes containing therein meals without any trouble from one of portions of the path of travel for the dishes and meals to the other of portions of the path of travel, because the turning action of the rotary disc affects the transfer of the dishes to a considerable extent.